


Alone in the World

by KanedaX



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: F/F, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-13
Updated: 2011-08-13
Packaged: 2017-10-22 14:12:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,813
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/238896
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KanedaX/pseuds/KanedaX
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After Shaw starts World War III, the remnants of Charles Xavier’s team make their way across the Mutually Assured Destruction.  And they’re being followed…</p>
            </blockquote>





	Alone in the World

**Author's Note:**

  * For [aphrodite_mine](https://archiveofourown.org/users/aphrodite_mine/gifts).



> There's one term in this story I hesitated to use, weighing the pros and cons of modern political correctness vs. societal views of a female CIA agent in the early 60’s. In the end, I went with it. I hope it doesn’t affect your enjoyment of the story as a whole.

_December 3 1962_

 _After a month on the move, I think we’ve finally found a place to settle. For a little while, at least._

 _Westchester’s lost, obviously. Anything within a hundred miles of New York (or, more appropriately, The Glass Plateau) is considered instant death to anyone who tries to go in. Unfortunately, “instant” is inaccurate. You’ll get enough radiation into your system to kill you fast, but those few days between are pure agony. Rather it be “instant”._

 _I only wish I could forget everything the CIA taught me about nukes. Ignorance is bliss, and all that. I have thought of asking Charles to do it. Which means, of course, that I have asked him, even if I didn’t want to. Damn telepath._

 _He said, however, that he’s not skilled enough to only wipe portions of memory. If he wipes that portion of the training, he not only wipes ALL of my training, but the ten years of my life that happened during it. Better to not. As tempting as it is to go back to the memory and personality of my eighteen-year-old self, I’d rather live with the knowledge of exactly what’s happening to those who weren’t quite lucky enough to be at Ground Zero and not quite lucky enough to be far away from the major metropolitan areas than burden the group with another teenager._

 _Lord knows we have enough already._

 _Still no word on what exactly happened in the Bay of Pigs, but we all have our theories. Washin the government (I’m having a tough time remembering that Washington’s no longer “The Government”. It’s just a pile of rubble) is claiming the Soviets launched the missiles first. The Soviets (tactfully ignoring the word “Moscow” for the same reason) claim the United States launched before them. Some say they launched close enough to make no difference, since both fingers were just poised over the button waiting for the other to make a move._

 _I think it was neither. My personal theory is still the teleporter Azazel, or whatever his name is. Angel and Janos both claim he never used his real name around them, and if Emma read it at some point she’s not telling. According to Charles, both captains were hesitant to make a strike. My guess is that, during the battle with Henry, Azazel slipped into one, or both, control rooms and fired the missiles._

 _In the end, it didn’t matter who started it, as there was no one left alive to sort truth from hypothesis. Kennedy and Kruschev both reacted to the destruction that resulted from the Bay of Pigs massacre, and here we are._

 _Lights out. More later._

 _December 4 1962:_

 _I think we’re here for a while. We’re camped out in an abandoned farmhouse somewhere in Ohio. I’ve lost track of our locations, but it’s been too long since I’ve seen anything but small towns, so I’m pretty sure we’re far enough away from the explosion sites. Erik still says we should move, that there are unloaded missile silos or fallout shelters we should be able to use, but Charles says that we’re tired and need some sort of relief, even temporary. I can see the argument from both sides, but I agree with Charles. Besides, we’ve been in the open for so long that we’ve probably caught enough radioactive fallout to sterilize us all for life. No sense in hurrying if we’re already dying._

 _We got off easy. Small consolation, I know, considering the millions (dare I say a billion?) people who died on Strike Day, but most of us are still here. My heart still aches for Henry, who was caught on the ship when it blew, and for Sean, who had tried to rescue him but was caught in the explosion anyway. But we came away otherwise unscathed, and in this world we can only mourn the dead for so long._

 _Erik carried us back to the States. Built a boat out of the scrap of the destroyed fleets. We made our way up the coast, past New York, Boston, and eventually into the less-developed patches of New England. We’ve been on the move since then, cutting through Virginia just long enough to break Emma from the abandoned facility near Quantico._

 _When do we stop? Where do we stop?_

 _December 10, 1962_

 _Caravan drove through today. Four men, three women, and a little girl that couldn’t have been more than five. Heading west from Hershey in two pickup trucks loaded with supplies, and a five year old Chevy that I’m shocked is still in commission. Fuel’s at a premium, and a vehicle like that drinks a lot._

 _They added us to the chain of rumor: The Human Torch has been spotted in Pittsburgh._

 _We don’t know who he, or she, is. No one does. But, like so many other conversations in this world of word-of-mouth news, we have theories. And in this, at least, Erik, Charles, and I agree._

 _It has to be Shaw. Has to be. He vanished after the Cuban attack. So did Azazel. If you have the ability to absorb energy, the knowledge of where most of the atomic bombs would strike, and a teleporter at your disposal, it’s only a matter of coordinating yourself to be as close to as many ground zeroes as you can, jumping from city to city, between the United States and the Soviet Union, until either he’s sated or his transportation’s dead._

 _Did he overestimate his powers? Is the Human Torch actually Shaw traveling between cities, glowing like a beacon, sweating nuclear radiation because his body simply can’t contain it all?_

 _If so, I fear for what will happen to us. If the word on the road is correct, his path is taking him west. We were in Hershey. We also know that he was seen around Westchester before that._

 _Is he following us? How? Did he absorb so much radiation that the energy actually changed his genetic structure? Facing Shaw before was a horrible enough thought. Facing him as the Torch is worse. But if he’s developed more powers, if he’s evolved…_

 _December 13, 1962_

 _Crossed into Indiana today, I think. Discussion about whether we go north or south once we get past Lake Michigan. Avoiding Chicago, of course. Or what’s left of it._

 _Erik, Emma, and Alex vote cutting north around Rockford, into Madison and eventually across into Minnesota and the Dakotas, while Charles, Angel, and I continue to say we veer south, down along the Mississippi, eventually heading west again around St. Louis or even the Oklahoma border. It’s December, for God’s sake. It might be a mild one so far around here, yes (And how much of that has to do with the attack? I try not to think about it). But once we cross up into the northern plains, the Badlands?_

 _Which I suppose might be the point of the whole thing. Shaw’s energy absorption might have a fight against January in Fargo. But those three are from colder regions of the world, they can handle it more than the rest of us._

 _With Janos vanishing in the night three nights ago (Angel again tried to press Charles to find him, but he said no. “I was reading doubts”, he insisted. “And, just touching him now, I still feel them. I’m not going to force him to come back to us if he doesn’t trust us.”) we’re at a stalemate. And Raven…_

 _We’ve talked to her. A lot. But she still insists that we wait for Shaw to find us._

 _“What if it’s not Shaw?” she said once again during the meeting. “We can’t know…”_

 _But there’s no way she could possibly think it’s anyone else, especially him._

 _Or maybe I just don’t want to consider the possibility. At this time last year I didn’t even know mutants existed. Since then, I’ve met men who can bend metal with a thought, women who can control minds, boys who can emit waves of unexplainable energy, and girls that can change their appearance as easily as I can blink._

 _And yet this whole time, when up against a man who can catch a grenade’s explosion or a man who can kill an entire building of CIA agents by dropping them from the sky, I always thought they had a weakness. Shaw, or the man Charles and Erik met with that extraordinary ability to heal himself. I always thought that, if things came to a head, they could be stopped. They could be killed. And they may, eventually, die of old age._

 _But if Raven’s right… Could there be immortal mutants?_

 _What chance does the human race stand?_

\------

Moira opened her eyes. It was dark, night, the room she shared with Angel and Emma dim with blue moonlight. Damn, it might be a mild December, but it’s still damn cold, she thought, tightening the blankets around her.

Noise outside. Voices talking. She sat bolt upright, her hand grasping in the pale light for her bedmate.

 _There she is_ , she thought, wrapping her hands around the hunting rifle. Not exactly CIA issue, she had procured it in the closet of the farmhouse back in Ohio, but any port in a storm…

Angel and Emma were both gone, their beds empty, sheets torn aside as if in a hurry.

 _Charles must have woken them,_ she thought. _Sent out a distress signal into their sleeping minds._

 _Why didn’t he wake me?_

 _Because what good are you in a fight?_

She pushed the thought down. It was hard enough surviving in this new world, but if you started to think that you were worthless, were a burden, then what was the point of even going on?

Instead, she flipped her legs out from beneath the blankets, grabbed a woolen sweater and pulled it over the one she was already wearing. Running down the stairs, she noticed that, surprise of all surprises, she was the only one still inside. She stabbed her toes into her boots, not caring about tying them, and stepped outside into the Iowa night.

“We move,” said Charles to the rest of the group, circled around him. “We’re not ready to confront him, not like this, we need to move _now_.”

“When _will_ we be ready, Charles?” said Erik. “We keep running, and he keeps coming, faster and faster. A few more days isn’t going to do any of you any good.”

“And it’s suicide if you fight him now,” said Xavier, putting his hand on Erik’s shoulder.

“Not if we fight him together!” Erik hissed. “You know it would work, he can’t absorb if you—“

“I refuse to even consider that plan—“

“What’s happening?”

“Oh, Moira!” said Charles, turning to her. “You’re awake.”

“Yes, I’m awake,” said Moira. “Of my own volition and everything. What’s happening?”

“Shaw’s coming,” said Angel, tightening the worn flannel around her.

“How do you know?”

“Alex saw the glow,” said Erik, pointing his chin off to the horizon, where an orange and red haze cut through the darkness.

“Are we sure it’s not just sunrise?” asked Moira, hoping her internal compass was off.

“That’s west,” said Charles.

 _Damn internal compass._

“It would work,” said Emma, bundled up in a white mink jacket that she managed to keep immaculate despite the strain of their journey. “There’s no way he still has his helmet, the Russians couldn’t build something to withstand what has happened to him. Even if he’s still wearing it, the internal components, the telemetry--“

“We have not discussed this matter publicly, Miss Frost,” Charles interjected, “and I would be grateful if you don’t leap into my head to sort through my plans—“

“ _Ms._ Frost, you impudent child,” Emma said. “And I didn’t have to sort through _your_ mind. Erik told me weeks ago.”

Charles shot Erik a cold glance. Erik only responded with a determined eyebrow.

“Personally,” Emma continued, “I think it’s brilliant.”

“It’s murder,” said Charles. “I’m surprised you’d even think it, _Ms._ Frost, considering your relationship with him.”

“Past relationship, thank you,” said Emma. “That was over the moment he left me to rot in that detention center. I’d gladly see him on a cold slab.”

“Wow,” said Alex, “you’re a cold-hearted bitch.”

“Thank you, dear.”

“If you don’t intend to kill him, what _do_ you hope to accomplish?” Erik asked, one hand absently dancing a coin between his fingers. “You can’t well arrest and incarcerate him in this world. And you don’t rehabilitate a man like Shaw.”

“Between Charles and I,” said Emma, “we can rehabilitate him until he thinks he’s Chet Huntley.”

“Now is not the time for philosophical discussion,” Charles insisted. “Now is the time where we leave. If he comes, he will fight, and we can’t stand up to him. Not here, not now.”

“That’s a… hell of a pep talk, Professor,” said Alex drily.

“He’s a bundle of living energy,” said Charles. “Your force beams are useless against him. There isn’t enough metal in the area to contain him—“

“Only enough to matter,” said Erik, the coin spinning in his palm.

“—And Emma and I can only concentrate on stopping his body when he’s within our telepathic range. Which won’t be forever.”

“And we have to sleep sometime. Comatose is good,” said Emma, her head tilting in thought, as though she were deciding what gown to wear that evening rather than deciding the fate of a man. “I can do comatose. Just scramble his brains enough.”

“We run.”

“It’s not like we’d be killing him.”

“Just fucking read him!”

The group turned to face the forgotten member. Raven stood off to one side, her arms crossed over her pajamas. She hadn’t given herself time to change ( _if those are even clothes,_ thought Moira, _and not a layer of her skin_ ), but she must have changed her body composition enough to keep her warm in the cold. She was blue. She was always blue, ever since they had left for Cuba a month ago, changing only on the rare occasion when subterfuge was needed to collect supplies. She was even blue when they walked through civilian settlements, which caused a ruckus more than a few times.

 _She sure picked a hell of a time to make a statement about mutant equality,_ thought Moira.

“Raven,” said Charles, “I can’t read him, he’s too far away.”

“Then wait for him to get closer,” said Raven.

“ _Within attack range,_ you mean,” said Emma. “If we wait for him, we die.”

“What if it’s not him?”

“Raven,” said Charles, his voice speaking in the infinite patience of a brother speaking to a much younger sister, “it’s not _him._ We’ve had this discussion, it must be Shaw, it can’t—“

“You don’t know that!” said Raven, stepping into Charles’s face. “You keep writing it off as impossible when it’s not!”

“It is impossible,” said Erik, and Raven shot him a dark glance with her yellow eyes. Erik, for his part, stood firm against her. The two had been sharing a bed ever since the war began, and Moira wondered on more than one occasion just how much of that was true desire and how much of it was a mutual desire to rub Charles’s morality and philosophy in his face.

Despite the black looks between the two now, despite the situation, Moira once again felt that unwanted stab of jealousy rise up inside her. It came up quite a bit, more than she’d like, but she still couldn’t completely say _why._ Because they could have each other, but she, for some damn unexplained moral code, couldn’t have Charles? Because they _did_ have each other, and any companionship at all was a hell of a thing to have in this new world?

It couldn’t be because she wanted Erik. She didn’t. Too focused, too serious. She’d seen the look before in her line of work. He was walking a fine line between Angel of Vengeance and serial killer.

And Raven... Well, when she was blue she was… _blue_. But before, when she had made herself look… normal…

 _Great,_ Moira thought, her face turning pink in the cold. _Lovely. Fantastic. You’re abnormal enough as it is, a human in a group of mutants. Do you really want to start turning into a dyke, too? Might as well kill yourself now._

“It’s not impossible,” said Raven, and Moira flinched, as though the girl had been reading her thoughts, responding to the unwanted fantasies floating through her head. “Nothing’s impossible. _No one’s_ impossible. Not anymore.”

“But you can’t _know_ ,” said Angel. “We saw him die. You, me, and Alex. That’s damn strong proof to me.”

“I know,” said Raven, shaking her head. “But I just have this… Feeling. Strong. I can’t explain it. Just…” she turned to Charles, “just… humor an old friend?”

Charles looked long and hard at Raven, and Moira could read a thousand conflicting emotions running through his face. She knew what he and Raven were. Had been. Their history, their close bond, merging together as familiar, familial, romantic, platonic.

You didn’t have to be a telepath to know how much the words “old friend” had hurt him. How much he recognized them, understood them, realized how much of an idiot he’d been to hold down this amazing girl all these years, and how he knew, how _they_ knew that whatever connection they had once held was gone. Probably forever. Because he’d never seen her as anything but human.

His face softened. He took a hold of Raven’s hand and squeezed. “Angel,” he said, “can you fly me?”

“Scrawny little boy like you?” said Angel, letting her flannel fall to the snow, revealing her button-up sleepwear. “Fuck yes.”

“You can get me close enough where he’s within my read,” said Charles, squinting off to the horizon. “Hopefully he’s too focused to look up.”

“Someone slice me,” said Angel, turning her back to the group. “I ain’t wearing nothing under here, and there ain’t enough cash in the world to get my tits out in this weather.”

“Charming, as always,” said Emma as Erik’s coin flashed forward, slashing two slits in the back of Angel’s pajamas, revealing hints of her lace-like tattoo markings beneath. Within moments, two sets of insectile wings emerged from within.

“Thanks,” she said, stretching her back muscles as she adjusted the fabric around the wings. “Ain’t had a chance to open up for a while. Too many tiny showers in these houses. You ready, X?”

“Let’s go,” said Charles, turning towards the glow. Angel came up behind him and wrapped her arms around him. “Don’t get fresh,” he said to her with a smirk as she slipped her arms up under his shoulders.

“In your dreams, Shorty,” said Angel with the kind of professionally flirtatious smile that only a stripper can pull off. With a bend of her knees, Angel rocketed off into the night. Within moments, her legs were wrapped around Charles’s thighs.

“Oh my,” said Charles as the two flew across the plains as she pressed herself against his back. “You certainly know how to make a man feel welcome.”

“Christ,” Angel said with a roll of her eyes, “are you always this way around hot women?”

“Sorry, old habits die hard,” said Charles.

“It’s called air dynamics, or something like that,” said Angel. “I can go faster when you’re not all dangly beneath me.”

“Duly noted,” said Charles with a brief nod. The snow blasted past beneath them as they flew on in silence towards the glow.

After a while, Angel spoke up: “Was that just an old habit dying hard, or was that an actual come-on?”

“Um,” Charles said, his brow furrowed, “I’m not sure. Raven asks me loaded questions like this all the time, hang on…”

“It’s fucking freezing up here,” she said. “We don’t get nothing like this in Southern California. How the hell do you people deal with it?”

“Uh…” Charles stammered, “Well, we have our… ways…”

“Any of them involve you warming me up after we land?”

She felt Charles tense up in her grip. “Remember my mention of ‘loaded questions’…?”

“No loaded question,” said Angel. “Just saying ain’t none of us had any play in a month ‘cept Magneto and Mystique, and a girl starts feeling lonely when she has enhanced hearing—“

“You do?”

“You don’t feel an itch?”

“No, I mean the enhanced hearing,” said Charles. “I wasn’t aware.”

“Who knows? Bug thing, or something,” said Angel.

Silence fell over the pair as their thoughts ran.

“You won’t bite my head off afterwards?” said Charles after a moment.

“You want me to drop you right now?” said Angel, loosening her legs slightly. “You might survive the experience.”

“No!” Charles said, reflexively grabbing her forearms. “No, I’m… I’m fine, thank you. Can we… We can discuss this after we land, we’re getting-- Oh."

The light on the horizon blinked out, almost as though it never existed.

“Oh, my.”

“What?” said Angel. “What is it? Where’d Shaw go?”

“We’re… We’re within range.”

“And?”

Charles turned his head to look up at her.

“And Raven was right.”

\------

 _December 21, 1962_

 _Darwin._

 _Armando Munoz._

 _He’s back._

 _I’m still trying to comprehend it. Angel said it herself that night: He died. Alex attacked Shaw, Shaw absorbed his power, made it into a little ball, and forced Armando to swallow it. He changed, he tried to adapt. He exploded._

 _He didn’t die._

 _Reactive evolution. The ability to instantly evolve to survive any situation._

 _He doesn’t remember how it happens. He just reappeared at the facility, glowing red. Why?_

 _“You come up against something truly dangerous,” said Erik, “and you have two choices: fight against it or become it. I imagine he chose the latter.”_

 _His body couldn’t fight the energy. So he became the energy. Exploded into billions of… ions or whatever Alex emits, and eventually pulled himself together._

 _His consciousness still intact. But more than before. I think a discussion of what that means from a theological basis would fill an entire notebook, so I’m just going to leave it lie._

 _What is reactive evolution? Is it still reactive? When he walks across half the country, never tiring, never hungering, his body staying in its energetic state to protect him from both radiation and outside attack, is it still reactive? When he develops an internal homing beacon to find us (or at least to find Raven) like a young animal can find his mother in the middle of a herd, is it still reactive?_

 _And when that protective shell vanishes the moment Charles touched his mind, the moment he realized he wasn’t alone anymore…_

 _Is it still reactive?_

 _And if it’s not, what does that mean?_

 _What does_

\------

A knock at her door. Moira looked up from her journal.

Alex and Raven were outside on their patrol. Erik and Emma had gone into the nearby town to see what could be found for supplies. Charles was in his room with Angel, probably… Moira pushed that thought away. It was random, it was hormonal more than romantic, and it wasn’t her. Mutants and mutants, and she, Moira, was only human. She was a different species to them. Deal with it.

Only one person left in this house besides her, at least one that wasn’t currently naked and/or horizontal.

“Come in, Armando.”

The door swung open, and Darwin walked in. He looked like he always did, like he had when he was first brought onto the team. Still the same tall, lanky 20-something black boy that had been driving cab and that had joyfully egged Alex into smashing him over and over with chairs and a baseball to show off his hardening skin.

His grin was gone, though. And there was something in his eyes that wasn’t there before. He was always smart, but this… this was something else.

“You’re not alone,” he now said, his voice calm yet deadly serious.

Moira blinked. “What?”

“You keep thinking you’re alone,” he said. “It’s not true.”

“How…?”

“I… don’t… know!” he said, rubbing his temple with his fingers as he flopped down on his bed. “After I came back, I… I have so many thoughts. So much knowledge. And I don’t know why. I didn’t even know that you were feeling that way until it… just came to me.”

“Did you develop some kind of telepathy, maybe?” said Moira, instantly thinking of film quotes to block him. “Like Charles and Emma?”

“I can’t read your mind,” said Darwin with a shake of his head. “It’s more like… like I just know that it’s important for me to know this. Just like I knew that you all were heading east, like I knew which cities were the most dangerous to walk through, like I know that Shaw’s still out there, building an army.”

“He is?” Moira said, her body temperature dropping at the thought.

“Things are going to come to a head,” said Darwin. “And soon. A year, at most. I know this because I _need_ to know this. To protect myself. But… But it’s more than that, I think.”

“You’re being cryptic,” said Moira. “You have to be clearer, Armando. If you want us to help you—“

“I’m being as clear as I can be,” said Darwin. “I… It’s more than personal protection. It’s more than my body reacting to outside… stimuli, as the Professor likes call it. It’s not reactive evolution anymore. It’s proactive.”

“Proactive,” Moira gasped. “Like… your body knows what’s going to happen to it? More than instantaneously?”

“Maybe?” said Darwin with a shrug. “All I know is that I walked in here, and knew that you thought you were alone. And I knew you weren’t. And I suddenly knew why. And how I can help.

“You think you’re alone because you don’t think you’re one of us.”

Moira’s mouth opened. Closed. Opened. “That’s… that’s not true,” she said. “I serve… many useful purposes.”

“Hell of a cover, there,” he said with a grin. “You think you’re not a mutant.”

“I know I’m a mutant,” said Moira, taking a lock of her auburn hair in her fingers. “Mutated MCR1 gene. It was the first thing Charles told me, back when I was just an object of his eternal libido rather than a colleague and a burden. ‘A very groovy mutation.’”

“I didn’t know until I walked in here,” said Darwin. “Shaw thought that radiation created mutants, and will only make us stronger. But he was wrong.”

“But he’s still alive.”

“And so are we. And so are you. And so are many other humans. They’re all stronger in ways he can’t begin to comprehend.”

“But you can?”

“Mutation’s a funny thing,” said Darwin, standing up. “Especially around radiation. There are a lot of humans out there now that aren’t quite human, by scientific standards. Nor are they… um… _homo superior_? Is that what Professor calls us?”

“Yeah,” said Moira. Her mouth was suddenly dry. She didn’t know why.

“There’s reactive evolution,” said Darwin, his eyes drifting off. “There’s proactive evolution. There’s social evolution. Personal survival versus survival of the species.”

“What species?” said Moira, standing up. “Yours or ours?”

“Shaw got it wrong,” said Darwin with a shake of his head. “After the bombs, it’s not us versus them anymore. It’s not humans vs. mutants. Because there aren’t any humans left anymore. Not technically, at least. The humans are mutants. We’re not fighting for the survival of mutants, the domination of mutants. We’re fighting for the survival of _everyone_. And I need to help in any way I can.”

“How?” said Moira. She wondered if she should be reaching for her pencil. Or for her gun. What difference would it make? Was she even _in_ danger?

“You’re not in danger,” said Darwin. “Not from me.”

“Christ, can _everyone_ read my mind in this place?” Moira yelled.

“We need to survive,” said Darwin. “All of us.”

“How?” said Moira. “How the hell am I supposed to survive? What can I do? I have a rifle and… and… and that’s all! I’m a relic! An artifact!”

“Your mutation started when you were born,” said Darwin. “Your MCR1 gave you auburn hair. Your mutation continued after weeks of exposure to God only knows how much radiation. I’m pretty sure that both the US and the Soviets used weaponry that couldn’t even be classified as atomic. They all had their little secrets, secrets that Geneva would have disapproved of. They might have even written them a strongly-worded statement. Doesn’t matter. There are energies and chemicals and whatever else that have been buffeting you and other humans until you’re no longer human.”

“And then what?” said Moira as Darwin stepped closer.

“Now?” said Darwin. “Now evolution takes another leap forward.”

He put his fingertip against her forehead.

And Moira MacTaggert wasn’t alone anymore.


End file.
